WE’RE ALL SHIFT WORKERS NOW

SHIFT workers experience more health problems than non-shift workers, particularly gastrointestinal diseases, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

The official European Union definition of a shift worker is a person who stays awake for more than three hours between 10pm and 5am for more than 50 days in a year.

Yet I believe we are all now shift workers simply due to how we live our lives.

Not convinced? I’ve identified several different types of shift work. Read the descriptions below and you may change your mind.

TRADITIONAL SHIFT WORKER:

Roughly 20-25 per cent of the workforce in any country is involved in shift work. This includes those in the emergency services; police; workers in health services (nurses, doctors), manufacturing, construction, utility services (such as rubbish collection), air and ground transportation and the food industry.

YOUR LIFESTYLE IS LIKE A SHIFT WORKER’S:

Those who fall into this category include school and university students, new mothers, carers and the spouses of shift workers. New working mothers have the roughest time syncing their lives to a daily rhythm because their day is affected by everyone else in the home.

They wake up early to get breakfast ready for the family, prepare the kids, get them to school then get themselves to work.

After dinner they oversee homework, exercise or work at home late into the night. Teens have a difficult time, too: many can stay awake well past midnight, meaning they don’t get sufficient sleep if they have to wake up before 7am to go to school.

THE JET LAG SUFFERER:

Jet lag occurs when you travel across two or more time zones within a day. Most people’s body clocks take almost a day to adjust to each hour of time-zone shifting.

THE SOCIAL JET LAG SUFFERER:

This is essentially a problem of someone who sleeps in at weekends and wakes up at least two hours later than on weekdays. More than 50 per cent of the population has social jet lag.

Staying awake for three extra hours and delaying your breakfast by three hours on the weekend, by partying or staying awake late into the night, is the same as flying over a few time zones.

DIGITAL JET LAG SUFFERER:

You chat with friends or colleagues who are several time zones away and, as a result, have to stay awake for more than three hours between 10pm and 5am, disrupting the hours you should be sleeping.

SEASONAL SHIFT WORKER:

Millions of people living in extreme north and south latitudes (residents of Northern Canada, Sweden and Norway, for example) experience less than eight hours of daylight during winter and more than 16 hours of daylight in summer. These extreme exposures to daylight and darkness disrupt their circadian rhythm and hence their ability to sleep properly.